Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. Ephesians 1:3
A relative of mine was telling me all about the blessings she had received from God. She began by describing how God had blessed her and her husband with well-paying positions that enabled them to buy the things they enjoyed. She was blessed, she told me, with a lovely house, two fine cars, a vacation cottage on a lakeshore, and several recreational vehicles. She went on about the beautiful clothing, furniture, books, pieces of art, and so on. Because she had been listening to a so-called prosperity gospel preacher, she believed all those things were important; these were God’s blessings to her. But she never mentioned anything beyond material blessings. There was no mention of spiritual blessings. That’s too bad, because material blessings last for such a short time, while spiritual blessings are forever. Our text makes much of spiritual blessings. But what are they? The apostle Paul doesn’t leave us in the dark, because our text is the introduction to a description of some of those blessings.
The word ‘blessing’ is translated from the Greek word ‘eulogy’, which we know from funerals, when someone speaks good things about the departed. God’s blessings are His expression of good things to us. He tells us about them in His Word, and He grants them to us in His grace. And it will take all of eternity for us to number them or explore their great depths. But they start off in verse 4 with God choosing us to make us holy and blameless. That is an amazing transformation for helpless and hopeless sinners who deserve hell but are now fit for Heaven.
Verse 5 reminds us that God has adopted us into His family, and we have the blessings of a close and eternal relationship with Him and with our Lord Jesus Christ. The pope says nobody can have such a relationship, but he apparently has not read Ephesians 1.
The chapter keeps going on with an unfolding of these spiritual blessings. In verse 6, it’s being ‘accepted in the beloved’. In verse 7, it is ‘redemption through His blood’ and the ‘forgiveness of sins’. In verses 8 to 10, we have the unfolding of ‘the mystery of His will’. Verse 11 reminds us that ‘we have obtained an inheritance’. Verses 13 and 14 tell us about being ‘sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise’. Keep in mind that all of these blessings, and many, many more, are not restricted to just a few privileged among us. No, these blessings are for all of those who belong to Christ.
If God has given us so great spiritual blessings, we ought to know and appreciate them as much as possible. Read Ephesians 1 over and over, and rejoice in these blessings! – Jim MacIntosh